During its fourth quarter earnings call, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook talked about what the station group did immediately after its $4.6 billion acquisition of Media General and what the company has in the works for the coming year, including more leadership changes at the local level.
“Four-hundred-seventy-eight days passed from the time we made our first public offer to acquire Media General to the closing of the transaction. During that period we visited each Media General station and digital business location and our executive and corporate management teams developed a strategic plan for each station and digital business to ensure that they will operate with the disciplines and focus of the Nexstar legacy businesses,” said Sook. “As a result, when the transaction closed in mid-January, we immediately began to execute our 120 day integration plan and synergy realization strategies. On January 18, Nexstar announced several senior management changes and appointments to support the growth and success of the expanded platform. For the broadcasting business segment, we promoted Tim Busch to serve as President of Nexstar Broadcasting Inc. and announced three newly-created regional management positions.”
Sook also spoke about what’s next for Nexstar, which reported this morning its revenue rose 22.8 percent to a record $309.9 million last quarter.
“We also moved quickly to fill open General Manager positions and have hired or promoted eleven new television station GMs to-date with further appointments to be made shortly,” said Sook. “In addition, we plan to double the size of our Washington DC bureau and will be re-engineering and relaunching Bite Size TV. We are also in the process of adding sales resources to the former Media General markets and are transitioning stations onto the same operating systems and shared platforms and services including digital, sales management, traffic and graphics, among others.”